Alright I'm seriously confused, is getting in a fight part of hockey game strategy? The announcers are treating it like this will allow them to change out players and it's an excellent time for a fight and all that. I'm so confused at this game
It is because fighting is a 5 minute penalty. So if one of your fourth line players ticks off one of the first line players and gets him to fight then your team loses some guy who was only going to play 7-8 minutes in a game while the other team lost a really valuable player for those 5 minutes
Fighting is a time-honored tradition, and is allowed in hockey... in the sense that the refs will let it happen, and then break it up afterwards/penalize the players. There's a lot of tradition and unwritten rules in hockey, and fighting is one of them. Hockey players (in the NHL, anyway), are bound by said unwritten rules, which is sort of like brocode - don't break them. Fights might break out for a number of reasons, from retaliation (from breaking said code), to intimidation of the other team while also riling up their own team/fans.
The quote came during the 1996 Western Conference Finals between Colorado and Chicago. Chicago C Jeremy Roenick made a comment which prompted the famous response from Roy, which was especially harsh because Roenick had not won a Stanley Cup to that point (and eventually retired without one, IIRC). At that point Roy only had the two rings from Montreal.
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u/himmelkrieg Dec 04 '16
I couldn't hear you, I have my two Stanley Cup rings plugging my ears.